often angry. always gen x.

considering silence: (emailed) conversations with trappist monks

Is silence beneficial for all people? I would say the cultivation of silence is indispensable to being human. People sometimes talk as if they were “looking for silence,” as if silence had gone away or they had misplaced it somewhere. But it is hardly something they could have misplaced. Silence is the infinite horizon against which is set every word they have ever spoken, and they can’t find it? Not to worry—it will find them.

Having done a monastic stint myself, I love hearing the perpsective of monastics, regardless of tradition. My community wasn’t silent except during short periods of intensive retreat. I’ve often thought a longer period of absorption into silence would be a great gift to experience. But I also love that such an environment isn’t couched in idealism here (h/t Sully). I’m very intrigued by Father A’s (actual names not used) comment:

The silence does make me aware of my inner workings, however, what we call in the monastery, “self-knowledge.” I can’t pretend that I’m always a nice guy, always patient, always calm and receptive. I have to admit that I can be abrupt, cold to offenders, or would often prefer efficiency to the messiness of other people’s moods. Silence seems to keep me from idealizing myself.

I would have thought silence more likely to produce the opposite effect– an inflated sense of one’s equanimity, given lack of arguments or lesser verbal unpleasantries with others. I seem to recall hearing stories of monastic communities that received a rude awakening when they gave up silence (post-Vatican II? of course I can’t find anything on the web right now so I have nothing to back up my vague memories), when monks and nuns who had been peaceably coexisting together for years discovered how fraught their relationships were once talking was injected into the experience. Anyway, the whole article is worth a read for those interested in a glimpse of Trappist monastic life and how it intersects with the world today (the fathers express more awareness of worldly affairs than you might expect).